What do you know about germany and where did you learn it?

[Justmehere]

@Effie and @PointlessExistence - threadbanned.

Any further attacks on any person or culture will lead to additional bans and possible closing of the thread.

Let’s keep the thread on topic: “What do you know about Germany and where did you learn it?”

 

[Never_falter2]

Just a small comment @Effie. So happy you are going to visit our country.

Does one get killed in Germany? Hopefully not. The murder rate is actually much lower than that of the US BUT there have been some horrible crimes lately... like probably in the US too.

If you are going to Germany the best thing is to ask a local for advice, which areas of the city you are going to visit are safe, how to dress and how to behave. Would be doing the same when going to the US. I think you are a military brat, aren’t you? In Europe people from military families are advised to not mention it because there is a fear that they might be attacked.

I do not want to scare you or make you feel like Germany is unsafe. It is much safer than the US but as a person who has been a victim of crimes and a person whose husband husband has PTSD I feel that WHOLE THE WORLD is an unsafe place and unfortunately Germany is not a safe fairytale country too. So telling you there there is no need to worry at all would be wrong.

 

[Deleted member 19804]

Germany is definitely a big country, and one thing I've learned from visiting there is that any one German city does not adequately represent the country and its people. For example, I find it very interesting how different some parts of Eastern Germany still are from Western Germany. The effects of the Berlin wall are still definitely there. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, by the way, just that I think it's interesting to see the difference. From a sociological point of view, I mean. :)

I agree that Germany overall is a very safe country. No country is 100% safe, but I'd say Germany is definitely one of the safes countries in the world.

Most of the things I know about the country stem from what I was taught in secondary school, working with German clients, and the few times I've been there. Germany is much more than just Berlin, and it's well worth a visit. :)

 

[ms spock]

I learnt about Germany, though learning German at school.
I learnt about Germany through talking to a wide variety of German people.
I learnt about Germany through reading an encyclopedia.
I learnt about Germany through reading books about Germany.
I learnt about Germany through learning history at school.
I learnt about Germany through having a friend who did a year of school exchange in Germany.
I learnt about Germany through living with a German person.
I learnt about Germany through reading books, watching documentaries, speaking to people who had been to Germany, like my sister and her partner.
I learnt about Germany through watching the news on TV.
I learnt about Germany through talking to German people at the German club.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I am a Air Force brat. I lived on air bases and in german villages for four years and went back to the states at nine years old. The german people I had contact with were very friendly and kind to me. I saw beautiful castles high in the mountains and a beautiful river. I played at a pond that people were ice skating on in the winter. I did a lot of sledding there. I learned how to skate. It was the happiest time of my childhood.

 

[shatter eyes]

smokies and sausages.
Great engineers.
Rich history.
Filling pastries.
Lovely people.

I also learned some from South Park.

 

[Anarchy]

Actually learned about by speaking to German people and reading works by German (and Austrian ) authors.

Mislead about by the British media, eg "the history channel" where it's always either 1941 or 1943, and war propaganda still goes unquestioned.

There's never mention in the mainstream of things like the interwar monetary systems, the morganthau plan to reduce German population by two thirds, or what possible military end was achieved by deliberately destroying German cultural heritage, most notably the city of Dresden, when the war was almost over.

There's also the keynesian claim that the German industrial miracle was thanks to war time destruction . The saving habits of Germanpeople and the policies of Mises and Röpke's student Erhardt is never mentioned.

 

[Anarchy]

I don't know whether this also applies in Germany

Britain is claimed to be so much safer than America. ..

The united state collates a homicide rate. If it looks like a homicide, that's what it gets recorded as, for the year it got found.

Britain records and reports a "murder " rate. This requires that a perp is caught, convicted, appeals and when the appeals process is completed, the conviction is upheld.

At that point, perhaps years after the actual event, and assuming that the paperwork hasn't been lost in the meantime, it is reported as a "murder " for that year

Journalists and politicians might even get some column inches or political mileage out of "the murder rate has gone up under Their regime/ declined under our enlightened leadership. .."

Now, what are some of the implications of this?
Clearly, international statistics are not comparing like with like

What proportion of homicides complete the process to be recorded as "murders"? I'd be very surprised if it is as high as 10% but assuming that it is that high, then the actual British homicide rate would be broadly in line with the rate in the united state

Bang goes all the bs about draconian gun laws making Brits so much safer.

And what sort of event is likely to complete the process?
A druggy drive by is very unlikely to, even more so a professional hit

What is likely to get into the stats is a blood spattered lover who called the cops themselves. Hence the oft repeated bs that our nearest and dearest are somehow a great risk to us (I'm not saying that they can't be a risk, but I am saying that there's a distortion there).

I suspect that German stats will have similar distortions. I know that German work place fatalities don't record people who die in an ambulance taking them to hospital, after being hurt at work!

Lies, damned lies and official statistics - they're increasingly poor bases for living our lives- in that order.

@

 

[Neverthesame]

military end was achieved by deliberately destroying German cultural heritage, most notably the city of Dresden, when the war was almost over.

I remember learning in school how "Bomber" Harris received almost universal (barring the most right wing of British parliament) condemnation for the firebombing of Dresden.
As it was a mostly civilian target.

As far as the economics go, at it's worst between the two world wars. Inflation in Germany had reached a point where a loaf of bread, could cost as much as 14,000,000,000.00 (fourteen billion) reichmarks.
That's from just after a time when German civilians were dropping dead in the streets of Berlin from starvation, while most of the food was being shipped out to the troops manning the trenches.
Germany's ability to rebuild it's economy is nothing short of remarkable.

Though there is certainly much about that country that doesn't make its way into popular media, for one reason or another.

Just as there is about the UK and Canada. ;)

 

[Anarchy]

Exactly, a group in society that claims monopolies to:
Initiate violence
Make final decisions in any disagreement
Define "money "

Has very effective tools for buying friend and influence

It's able to pay court chroniclers to concoct a distorted version of events, that actually manages to make that group appear good, and to peddle that through the schools and media it controls.

It's interesting that there was a major revisionist movement in the 1920s that examined the relevant records and personal accounts, and delete bunked the court chroniclers version.

After that, access to archives was restricted.

There's a lot of stuff about the interwar period that isn't mentioned. The British establishment controlled Europe between the wars through its control of the league of nat ions.

On all sides, the first war had been largely funded by printing lots of paper money. The united state had only officially been at war for 18 months instead of 4 years (arguably Wilson should have stayed out, resulting in a swifter negotiated peace, and no 1917 revolutions), and was one of the few places that managed to stay on a gold standard.

Instead of Britain contracting the paper money supply, the aim was to go back to gold at the pre war value, absolutely impossible!

Not only that, the British state continued to inflate the paper money supply, and persuaded everyone else to as well, including through the influence of Archibald Norman, head of the bank of England, Benjamin Strong , the leading influence in the Fe'ral reserve.

This set the scene for 20 years of deep depression in Britain, interwar hyper inflations in Europe, and the 1930s depression.

I'll let our German members explain the interwar barter deals that the German state concluded with the balkan and soutilities American states.

Arguably those barter deals, and the inability to export to the united state due to tariff barriers, preventing the earning of dollars to service debts to American and British creditors, are more convincing causes of war, thanks any dislike of the national socialist regime

The lamestream press in both Britain and united state, loved both Hitler and mussolini, and the progressives of the era were all for centrally planning eugenics as well as everything else. Check out some of the pamphlets from the era. Also Macadoo's bid for Democrat presidential nomination on a kkk ticket!

That's all forgotten about.

Despite not starting until the war was underway, a lot of places it is a criminal offence to question the official reason for the second war and why it was a "just" war. And individual Germans get flagellated on the basis of some spurious idea of collective guilt

 

[Anarchy]

Sorry, the head of the bank of England was Montagu Norman.
ArchieNorman was something more recent. I can't remember what.

 

[DharmaGirl]

My great-great grandfather came from Germany. I don't know much about Germany because my grandfather wouldn't speak about it. He had some issues during WW2 because of his German last name. I love learning about different cultures and their normal lives. I used to live in the southern part of America, and even though I didn't have a veranda, @leehalf, I would serve you iced tea on the porch and we would talk about gardens and children and how hot the weather was. I don't like fish, but I caught a catfish once and my neighbors took it, fried it and ate it. I now live in the Pacific Northwest of America, and would serve you iced tea or coffee and a pastry I baked.